I will say good-by and if you are not awake I will put it under your pillow. Your affectionate husband, “HARRY.” As Annie read this letter, it struck her for the first time that she had not appreciated the extreme youthfulness of her husband, who was much younger at twenty than she was on the eve of being nineteen. The letter, in its boyish simplicity, amused and touched her; however, it did not alter, but rather strengthened, a resolution which she had been busily forming and developing during those quiet weeks of illness. On the day following Harry’s departure for Leicestershire she was led down-stairs, being strong enough to walk now, and enthroned in the drawing-room as a special pet and sovereign. She was rather shy with George at first; but he knew how to be so quietly kind as to put her at her ease. William danced wild hornpipes of joy round her, until they threatened to turn him out for being noisy, upon which he instantly subsided, and fell into the opposite extreme of speaking only in a thick whisper. All the rest were kind, Lilian rather ashamed of herself, but grateful to Annie for not having mentioned her name to indiscreet Harry on that eventful Christmas night. George, after another stormy interview with his sister in the library, in which she had been in a position to give him back taunt for taunt, wisely agreed to bury all allusion to that night’s events, and merely used the power they gave him to insist on her marrying Mr. Falconer sooner than she wished. It had been a miserable business, that moonlit scene in the copse, requiring hushing up all round, but especially on Lilian’s account; so her eldest brother and Colonel Richardson had had to content themselves with an exchange of hard words, and the latter had returned to the station and the former to the house, each with an uneasy consciousness that he had never appeared to less advantage in his own eyes in his life. By the time Annie came down-stairs for the first time, the preparations for Lilian’s wedding were already in progress; and, when Annie suggested to Lady Braithwaite that she thought she wanted change of air, the latter offered to take her away to the seaside as soon as Lilian was married, saying she could not leave home before. But Annie thanked her, and said she would be well enough to travel by herself in a day or two; and she wanted to go as soon as she could to her aunt’s, she thought. When George heard of it, he begged his sister-in-law to wait until after the wedding, when he himself would take both her and his mother to Southport. She thanked him, but without accepting or declining the proposal. On the very day before Harry’s expected return, however, George having left home early in the morning for a day’s hunting, Annie came into the morning-room--where Lady Braithwaite and her daughter were inspecting some newly arrived wedding presents--dressed for a journey.